540/600are very respectable clocks on an X850XT with stock cooler...if you want to bring them up higher, I suggest you get an ATI silencer 5 (its not as scary as it look). If you want to find your max stable overclock WITHOUT changing your cooler, do the following...

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Guess i got really lucky with my card then, 570/620 are 24/7 clocks on my asus made x850xt with stock cooling and the highest benchstable is 586/636.
But anyway i didnt use the find max feature since that just crashed my computer and found my max clocks with some good ole trial and error.

if you're bothered by noise, set fan to 32% under load, and 43% if you start getting alarmed/have lockup or artifact issues. X850XT stock cooler is a better exhaust fan then a VGA cooler, but it still gets the job done. Just FYI, X850XT official max temp according to ATI is 105*C, so just make sure it doesn't get there and you'll be fine. My card hasn't gotten above 60*C yet

thanks trog. I have the idle set at 10% and the temp stays steady at 40c. then at 50c I have the fan speed at 50% and at 65c at 75%. anything over 70 is set at 100%. Hope this is ok.

I put in Morrowind to test the card out and it only took like 2 minutes of play before I started hearing the fan rev up to speed. I played for 10 more mins and exited out and my temps were at 73c. Is this a safe operating temp?

73 degrees isn't too bad but still a bit too high if you ask me. Try to get an Arctic Cooling or Zalman aftermarket cooler. It'll still run at 73 but try to get it as low as possible until you get a new cooler.

your card has two basic tempts.. low when it isnt doing anything in 2d mode and hot when its working hard in 3d mode.. there can be a rapid 20 c rise from one to the other.. as long as the fan is coming in somewhere between 60 and 70c.. its working okay.. 70c isnt really high..

fitting an artic cooler will make the fan run very quite and keep the temps down to between 50 and 60c with an overclocked card.. some of these cards with passive cooling run in the 90s so 70-sh isnt high really.. the other advantage is the artic cooler exhausts card heat out of the back of the case helping the case stay cooler..

hey, I know what will really shrink your temps! TT tide water...$80 is a tad rich, but it WILL make your temps go down, and its supposedly one of the easiest liquid cooling kits you will ever see (see the review) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835116017 if ATIsilencer5 doesn't solve your problems.

VyxerioN when you installed the VF700 you have to make sure the cooler is completely pressed on top of the GPU. It also has to be perfectly straight, can't have one side of the cooler higher than the other. If one side is higher tighten the screw harder on that side. You dont' have to worry about tightening it too hard because there's rubber washers in between.

Personally my card runs around 59~62C on 100% load. You have to keep in mind that ATi already runs alot cooler than Nvidia cards. My friend's 7800GTX runs around 68~70C on load even with the VF700 running on normal speeds.

The VF900 is out, you might want to give that a try. I've read alot of reviews on Newegg that users who switched from the VF700 to the VF900 got a 5~10C drop on load.

I would assume that is true because the VF900 has a much higher surface area than the VF700 and the VF900 uses heatpipes instead of regular heatsink.

I guess Zalman figured that headpipes were required after all the claims that their VF700 didn't run to spec, but how well your VF700 runs really depends how well your case is cooled and what type of environment you live in. Can't expect to have a 10C drop when your house is located in the middle of the desert.

i also have no idea why so many people say use the zalman cooler.. the artic one does a better job.. it exhausts the heat out of the case the zalman dosnt.. it also lets atitool control its fan speeds the zalman one dosnt.. the zalman has nothing going for it except its name..

trog

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I agree. Zalman is an absolute POS period. I get so sick of people recommending that fan against the Artic Silencer.

I remember seeing a few reviews of the Zalman cooler and all them were horrible and usually ended up doing a worse job than the stock cooler that was already on the card.

My last card was an X850XT and I had a arctic silencer fan on that card and was able to run 600mhz core and 620mem. With the stock cooler I could get 585core and 600 mem.